Start the server (via systemd)

Enable the systemd service to start at boot

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Environment file

The systemd service file and init.d script both use the file located at /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server for environment variables used when starting the back-end. Here you can override log directory, data directory and other variables.

Logging

By default Grafana will log to /var/log/grafana

Database

The default configuration specifies a sqlite3 database located at /var/lib/grafana/grafana.db. Please backup this database before upgrades. You can also use MySQL or Postgres as the Grafana database, as detailed on the configuration page.

Configuration

The configuration file is located at /etc/grafana/grafana.ini. Go the Configuration page for details on all those options.

Adding data sources

Server side image rendering

Server side image (png) rendering is a feature that is optional but very useful when sharing visualizations, for example in alert notifications.

If the image is missing text make sure you have font packages installed.

yum install fontconfig
yum install freetype*
yum install urw-fonts

Installing from binary tar file

Download the latest .tar.gz file and extract it. This will extract into a folder named after the version you downloaded. This folder contains all files required to run Grafana. There are no init scripts or install scripts in this package.

To configure Grafana add a configuration file named custom.ini to the conf folder and override any of the settings defined in conf/defaults.ini.

Start Grafana by executing ./bin/grafana-server web. The grafana-server binary needs the working directory to be the root install directory (where the binary and the public folder is located).